


arc

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon Compliant, Canon Disabled Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Dreams and Nightmares, First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, Post-Episode Ignis, Promnis Week, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Sharing a Bed, Sharing a Sleeping Bag, Sleeptalking, Tumblr Prompt, World of Ruin, blind gunman, blind sniper, doing mathematics in one's sleep, listening to someone sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 04:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17419025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: He falls asleep cursing the endless night, and he falls awake cursing his futile nightmares -- but this time he wakes up to a whisper by his side and maybe, just maybe, he might try to find a way out of his haze.





	arc

**Author's Note:**

> _written for[promnis week 2019](https://promnisweek.tumblr.com/), themes from days 2 and mostly 3_   
>  _day 2: one of them confesses their love during a life or death situation_   
>  _day 3: bed sharing | one of them shows up ~~to the other’s apartment~~ injured during the world of ruin _   
> 

In his dreams he can see, and in his dreams he is looking down at his hands opened futile and wide and trembling, and in his dreams his hands are full of ash and burnt-out matches.

 _Not this again,_ he says, he hears himself say out loud, in the ruins of a city on the sea, a city that is neither the Altissian altar to Leviathan herself, nor the Insomnian waterfront with its deserted decks and jetties and the old garden-park on its ruined struts and piers. Not this again, with the clouds frozen above him in the swirl and the hush and the electrified silent snarl of the fanning and fanning lightning, pure power fragmenting the sky in blood-stain bolts, never dissipating. Not this again, standing on water-waves, impossibly. 

And mountains, mountains in the distance everywhere he looks, the crags and the slopes eroded into familiar faces. To the west, Lunafreya, tipped back in the instant of her fall, dying, dying, and the shadow in the sky that looks like a lance, not her own sanctified weapon, driven through her and nothing clean about the impact. 

To the north, two faces in profile. Their names, their names, what are their names, the sounds forming useless on his mouth, because he had never used them or spoken them out loud in life. His father and his mother: Aquilifer and Livilla. The thoughts he’s spared for them, in his fleeting moments of spare time -- how many thoughts? How many spared moments?

To the south, the face that’s still and almost as known and familiar as his own. The broad planes, the scars old and new, the ragged remnants of determination and strength and that terrible pride that had led him heedlessly into such darker places. Gladiolus, the last voice he’d heard calling his name, before he’d lost his sight. Before the idea of this very night, frozen in his dreams.

To the east, and those features replicated on the body that was lying motionless on the ground. Noctis, Noctis, Noctis. Fallen, familiar, wearying: because even as Ignis watches (even as he has always watched), that boy’s form is dissolving, is flowing from flesh and bones into the freezing inertia of crystal, blue-stained mouth and unseeing eyes.

He feels his own body reach out for Noctis’s, and feels his own hands pass through the shadow and the illusion of that crystal: and the voices inside the crystal could never have belonged to his prince, his charge, his brother, his friend. Anger and hatred and disdain, low-rumbling sneers, rising into the world all around him where he’s caught and useless. 

All the things he knows, all the things he learned, all the things he realized: not a single one of these things can save him now, and not a single one of these things can save Noct at all.

And he still doesn’t know, in the here and now, which is worse: that he’s dreaming, caught here, pointless and gratuitous witness to nothing happening at all, except for the hours and the minutes passing, the days that must be whirling away beyond the clouds in this dream, beyond the shadows in the real world. 

Or is it worse that even in his dreams he can never reach Noctis? And in fact, in this dream, he doesn’t dare to. The matches in his hands, ashen ends like crooked claws, will burn again, will set that crystal alight, and he’s already had more than enough of that. He can’t stand it, can’t stop it, flame bursting almost obscenely, almost joyfully, from his left hand and that cursed ring, devouring the boy.

He has to wake up and -- today, he curses everything silently, because he can’t. Because even in his dreams he can feel the pain arcing up his left leg, the bandages knotted from ankle to knee and then from knee to very near where the pulse in his thigh beats. That strong steady pulse that tells him he’s alive, he’s alive, and he can fight daemons, he can wrangle people, he can lead if he absolutely must and he can give orders every time he can determine what’s going on around him, every time he can understand the situation he’s in.

But that pulse beats in time with the pain of his injuries, old ones and new alike. The disconcerting hum and pulse of the blood in his scarred face, his blank eyes. Pulse that makes him feel his pain in a constant and acute haze, and there’s nothing in the world that can push it aside, now.

Not for the first time, he almost thinks he wants to apologize to Noctis, to that absence of that boy, to the hole he’d left in the world that Ignis can no longer see, because he’s starting to understand what it’s like to live with that constant nag of pain wearing away at his nerves, slow ravenous awareness that eats around the edges of his thoughts, not to slow them down but to distract them, and -- he really does need a distraction, now.

He needs to wake, as soon as he can: but his mind isn’t being helpful. His thoughts are spiraling back to the source of this new pain, this fresh hurt layered over all the hurts of all the other nights, all the other dreams and nightmares. 

He’d volunteered for this one, is the thing -- that’s not the thing that gnaws at him. The thing that gnaws at him is -- the presence of those ayakashi, lying in wait along the route into the heart of Duscae, and he’d taken along a handful of medics whose skills had been needed in a tattered hunters’ camp, and -- he’d heard them fight as viciously and as skillfully as soldiers, as cornered soldiers in the teeth of a trap. 

And he’d screamed at them to leave him alone. Screamed at them to move on, to run for their lives, because he was going to be the distraction, he was going to try and take on the ayakashi on his own -- and he would have almost succeeded, too, except that the cursed things had kept slashing and slashing at him and finally nicked him in a place where he couldn’t ignore the pain -- or the constant, slow, steady buildup of blood in his boot.

Blood that would be the end of him, the moment he ran out, the moment the daemons caught up to him, and -- 

Flask in his hand that he’d been planning to detonate even as he was being eaten, in the hope of letting the fire within consume him, the lightning within scour him out of existence and safe from being taken by the daemons as one of their own. He would never have forgiven himself, to betray the others that way.

And then he’d heard the flash-fire, the reports and the echoes, massive-caliber firearms in use and he hadn’t even thought to mutter thanks at whoever it was that had stepped in to save him.

Had only felt the agony of his injuries being bound and staunched, the blood drying on his clothes and on his skin.

So Ignis wakes up, determined to find his savior, determined to thank him, her, them -- 

There’s someone in the sleeping bag with him, and that’s no surprise. There is a soothing soft song in the night all around him -- so he’s sleeping in a haven, and that’s not really a surprise any more, either.

The voice is familiar, from so many nights around the crackle of a fire: and for all that he would talk and talk and talk once someone had broached a pet topic, for all that he would brim all over with enthusiasm enough to almost run anyone and everyone else down, Prompto still and also knew how to stay silent, when the moment was too difficult and fragile for words.

What he’s not expecting is -- a muttering of numbers, like Prompto might be reading values off a list and -- what is he planning to do with those values? 

Prompto, talking numbers in his sleep?

He sits up, and winces -- chokes down a groan at the pull in his thigh and he blows out an explosive breath to try and ease the pain, to let it go, and in the end there’s nothing for it but for him to lie down once again, flat on his back for fear of aggravating the injury further.

The steady drone of numbers goes on beside him, apparently unaffected by his movements, and Prompto’s sleeping voice slows down and speeds up at odd intervals -- until the weight of him shifts, rustles, and he seems to be turning over.

Still asleep, from the steady whistle of his breath -- but those are Prompto’s hands making contact with the outsides of his arm, his leg. Tapping, fingers sweeping short dashes and points, writing on him as though he were a blank page, a blank screen -- and over and over tracing out a symbol: a round shape and a horizontal line bisecting it.

Not even in the weeks and weeks of their time in the Regalia, their time in various rest stops and hotels and caravans and tents, the idle moments waiting for predators or prey, has he ever noticed Prompto do anything like this.

What he remembers is -- Prompto’s fingertips tripping nimbly across a smartphone, and too many times he’d managed to glance over and catch glimpses of -- social media pages, or _King’s Knight_ , or some other game to pass the time, that Prompto would inevitably finish within a week or two and then he’d go look for another title, or do something else entirely.

Those hands with the freckles overlaid with gunpowder-stains, blackshot grains, so his skin was slowly turning into a map of the road that they were taking: a map of reverse-image stars and constellations and messages never deciphered, between the points marking out royal tombs and hard fights and places of shelter. 

He doesn’t remember this, he’s never even had a reason to connect Prompto and any sustained series of abstract calculations -- like mathematical dreams, and he asks, out loud -- “Prompto, what on Eos -- ”

He doesn’t get an answer: not one he can use, or make sense of, anyway, because -- Prompto is insensible to him. Is muttering about sine and cosine functions, about squared values and dividing by certain constants, the repeated use of the letter G. 

“Prompto,” he says, a little more loudly this time -- not too loudly or he’ll startle, he’ll skitter away, still nervous and now with good reason to be, in this night, in this haven, in these shrouded hours -- “Prompto, wake up, please.”

Only the last word is suddenly drowned out in a scream of hunger, malice, hatred.

Gasp from far too close by and lightning-like movement, and the voice of Prompto, far too awake far too suddenly, and murmuring quietly and clearly -- not at all like those numbers falling slowly in garbled strings from only moments earlier. “Ignis. You’re here. You all right?”

He grits his teeth. He swallows his pride. He shakes his head. “I cannot stand, not yet. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t have to be,” is the easy answer. Does he sound kind? Ignis can only hope he’s not being patronizing -- 

“Here, can you hold this? Be careful, you know where I am, don’t point the muzzle at me.”

Weight of cold material in his hands and he would stare, completely nonplussed and halfway to offended, if he could only determine where Prompto’s face and eyes were. “You mean for me to use this how?”

“Backup,” is the simple and plain answer, or the beginning of it. “I put that in the sniper configuration, you can feel the extended barrel, and here’s the cheek piece. Just -- listen to me. Listen _for_ me. If I scream, you probably need to start shooting -- but make it count, all right? I loaded that with, what, eight bullets, I have to hang on to the rest for myself.” Breath. Breath. Ragged with fear, whistling around the edges. “Oh, wait, you need to get comfortable or you’ll wear yourself out before you even fire a shot.”

“Which I won’t do, not if I run the risk of hitting you, and -- I can’t see you,” he says, wanting to spit the words out for all the good they’ll do.

“Not worried about you hitting me. You won’t. _You won’t._ You didn’t do that when you could see. You learned to avoid hitting me after you stopped seeing.” Hands around his, again. “And I trust you and your judgment: if you hit me because I started to scream, it’s okay, I’d want you to hit me. Put me out of my misery. Don’t let me be daemon food. Don’t let the daemons turn me.”

“I,” Ignis begins. “You asked me what I was doing, when you found me. Did we ever get around to -- that conversation?”

“Do we have to?” But the hand that presses into his shoulder is a warm and grounding weight. Reassuring. “I mean, I only asked you the once, right? I knew, I think we all know how that works now. After -- Cape Caem.” 

And Prompto sounds so small, so strong, so sweet all at once.

“I will thank you to go into no other details now,” and he remembers the stench of the place, the reek of blood long since dried and abused. Food gone to dust and mold and waste. Counter-tops stained with -- things he doesn’t want to think about, even in the here and now.

“Sorry. Yeah. You know what I mean.”

“Yes. But we must go over the topic again.” He doesn’t know why he has to insist. It’s not much, and it certainly brings him no relief from the anxiety of the night, but -- to just have the conversation at all, and with someone who understands. Just to have that small relief of the shared words.

He wants that.

“I -- yeah, I think we need to, and we’re the ones qualified for it, maybe.”

“Precisely.”

The screams outside the haven multiply and he feels his blood go cold, and again he tries to find another way around the appalling truth of their situation. For Prompto to ask him to be the backup shooter -- it almost doesn’t bear thinking about. “Do you truly have to go out there?”

“I think I have to, if I can clear a path for you, if you need to get out of here. I can run them around in circles so they don’t have to go near you -- and if they do, if they make that mistake, well, it’s you they’ll have to deal with, right?” There’s a rustle of cloth. Another momentary press of weight against Ignis’s shoulder: this time it’s the slope of Prompto’s arm against his. “I can at least do this for you.”

“And who will do -- this, or something like this, for you? Who will clear your path and help you escape?”

Chuckle, entirely broken. “Never thought that far ahead.”

“So no,” he says. “So allow me to do that. Prompto?”

“Yeah.”

He grits his teeth, and then tries to get the words out. “Clear the path if you must. But I won’t allow you to go too far. If I can’t hear you any more, if I can’t sense you any more -- you’ll have gone where I can’t reach you or save you or help you or -- I won’t allow that, Prompto. You are needed as I am needed. Stay within reach of this haven. Stay with me. Within reach of me.”

“How are you going to know where I am? If I’ve gone too far?”

“The numbers, which I don’t even know what you’re on about -- keep going, with those numbers,” he says, after a long shaking moment -- and his own blood is running cold with fear, which is why he catches once again at Prompto’s hands. “Please. I need to hear you.”

And those hands are equally hard and rough and heavy around his. “Okay, okay. Ignis. I’ll -- I’ll let you hear. I’ll stay near this haven. But promise me, too. If I tell you can’t make it back -- you know what to do.”

“You have my solemn word,” he says.

That weight of presence vanishes from him then -- and not a moment too soon, as that unearthly wail starts up and it seems to be right outside the haven -- he can only hope Prompto hasn’t run straight into the battle, all weapons ablaze. Wasteful, that would be. Foolhardy.

And the numbers start drifting back to him, a small mercy in this horrible night: Prompto, on the move, zig-zag path and trajectory, and he listens for the numbers, for Prompto doing mathematics even as he’s fighting to stay alive -- now that voice is heading north, now east, too many directions for Ignis to keep count and all he can do is keep listening.

The voice falters, the voice goes quiet for a moment -- and then picks back up in mid-stride, louder and more confident.

And Ignis thinks he wants to smile, a little, hearing the equations, the growing confidence and the fact that he’s now hearing the element of complexity -- 

“Ignis! A little help here!”

He sits up straighter and doesn’t even feel the pain that racks him again -- he moves his hands over the weapon he’s holding on to, the memory of Prompto’s hands moving his -- _don’t touch the trigger unless you absolutely intend to fire_ \-- and calls, “Ready. Numbers please.”

“Thing’s trying to get out of range fast,” is what he hears in reply, winded, rough rasp of breath around the edges of the words. “I can’t give you a definite angle of elevation, I have to give you more than one possible value, can you work with that?”

He tenses his good knee, lifts it so he can brace the rifle. “I will trust in your -- calculations.” 

It hits him, then, as he touches the trigger-guard. Angles, values, velocities -- sine and cosine functions and whatever that symbol had been, circle and line -- 

“Ignis, I got them, you gotta shoot on my mark -- ”

The trajectories of bullets and modifications, the actual mathematics of staying alive, no less important than the mathematics of warp-strike, of knives in flight -- and Prompto sleeps and keeps on calculating anyway.

Is probably still thinking about those numbers when he says, “Got it?”

Ignis nods, then. “I have the shot.”

“Okay, finger on the trigger, get ready for my mark -- _mark one!_ ”

One thought, one movement, one response to that voice in the night: Ignis fires, once.

“Mark two, are you ready?” 

A different angle this time, only a little downwards from the original, but maybe the difference is what will make this shot right, Ignis thinks. “When you are.”

“ _Mark two!_ ”

A scream, receding -- and brought to a sudden stop, and silence falls.

Ignis smiles, victory needling at his hands, and he puts the gun down in a hurry, and shivers.

“Shoulda gotten a pic of that,” and that’s Prompto, approaching once again, thump of his body hitting the ground, and the grin that Ignis can actually hear, the nerves and the laughter in his words. “You were perfect, you really were.”

And again Prompto is taking his hands. Is leaning into him. “This is okay?”

“Stay here, where you’re safe,” he says, quietly, truthfully.

“Damn right I’m safe here -- because you’re here.”

Settling in beside him, that comforting presence, and -- he thinks about his dream, again, but not to recoil from it. 

Prompto had not been in the dream. Had not been in the wind, in the waves, in the cruel sky, in the reproachful mountains. Had not been lost to him, or a frozen image of inaction or failure or regret.

This weight of the boy -- no, the man now, surely -- grounding him still. Guiding him when he needed it, and a little afterwards. Numbers and all, strange trajectories and all. 

And this trajectory that he’s coming to now may not be so strange or unwelcome, or so he hopes: he turns his head and brushes his mouth over -- a rough cheek, flyaway strands of hair.

There are no questions fired at him in return. No words. Just Prompto, there with him, holding on to him and -- pressing kisses to his cheek, too. 

His left side. His left cheek. 

He can’t actually feel all of those kisses.

So he turns his head and says, “Can you look at me?”

“I’m here.” 

And that’s all he needs. Proximity and gravity and acceptance take the places of -- values and symbols and functions.

He hopes Prompto doesn’t mind the -- substitutions, which help him find his target -- the curve of Prompto’s mouth against his, the smile he can feel, the breath washing over his skin.

Adrenaline-rush shivering in his nerves cuts the kiss short, but -- there’s a laugh, gentle and warm, running through him, where he thinks he maybe caught it from Prompto. 

“You’re sweet,” he hears Prompto say.

“I’m afraid I’m not,” he says, but he smiles as he goes on. “I’m a fool, for not realizing this sooner. You and me.”

“Don’t know what that is,” is the still-quiet response. “Don’t get me wrong. I have dreams about -- what you said. You and me. But we don’t know what that is, in the real world.”

It’s true, every word of it. Accurate and right, like a direct hit (from a knife, from a bullet). “So I ask you to give me a chance to try.”

“I was about to ask you the same thing. So -- that makes it official I guess?”

“...Yes. It does.”

He lets himself fall into the next kiss, into the next, into the next.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on Tumblr at my FFXV sideblog [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or at my main [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/) \-- or, hey, if Tumblr becomes too rotten and we can't talk there any more, there's always Twitter, where I am @ninemoons42.


End file.
